One Father’s Day, Maria drew a portrait of herself and her father in crayon. Instead of giving it to her dad like her classmates, she brought it and some balloons to his grave at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.

“It’s just harder to grow up without a dad,” she said sadly.

Patrick kept busy the day he found out his father died by selling lemonade to the stream of people bearing condolences.

Rick, the oldest, took it the hardest. His father was his soccer coach. He used to give him one dollar for every goal and two dollars for every assist. Rick was talented, but he quit playing soccer.

Sally Gannon and her 4 children placed a rose at her husband Rick's graveside at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.
— Nelvin C. Cepeda

Sally Gannon and her 4 children placed a rose at her husband Rick's graveside at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.
— Nelvin C. Cepeda

For many years he couldn’t bear to hear stories about him. He didn’t want to cry.

“If it is too painful, you want to be able to move past that. But eventually you don’t want him to just get lost, in the memory,” said Rick, now 21. “You want to be able to think about it, talk about it, keep him as alive as possible.”

Now he enjoys hearing about his father, like how he started breakdancing in the war zone. Remembering how they used to practice tricks on bicycles or stay up all night on the weekend playing video games together, he feels close to him again.

“What I feel a lot within the past couple years is more like anger than sadness. That I missed out on all these memories with my dad, and still am for the next ... as long as I live. I will never get to have a beer with my dad or any of that.”

For Sally, her children were the bulwark that stopped her from crumbling. “They kept me going. Because I had to, I had to make sure they were fed and taken care of,” she said.

Friends and co-workers in the Corps rallied around them, bringing dinner by, taking the boys for a tank ride. When Rick said a cat would help, two materialized within hours.

But there were so many decisions to make. They had never lived off base, never locked their front door, never owned a home or had to think much about which school to go to.

Sally is sweet but stoical. She keeps a wide-eyed smile on her face even when her eyes well with tears. Despite her normally calm demeanor, she got used to crying in public.

“The first Christmas was horrible. Trying to catch your breath between sobs,” she recalled.

It happened this spring at Twentynine Palms when she bumped into a Navy hospital corpsman who was close with her husband. They were in town for a get-together marking the anniversary of the battle of Husaybah. For the Gannons, it felt like a family reunion.

Doc Justin Purviance and Sally parked their carts in the base exchange and talked in the aisles for an hour, sharing stories. They were both bawling, Sally said, but “it is neat how other people’s lives were touched.”

Life as a single parent of four has been physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting.